The song I'm most likely to be listening to over and over right now is Stars' "Elevator Love Letter", off their Heart album (which I haven't listened to). It's a simple little thing, really, a trilling Stars-style boy/girl indie electro-pop tune, but what can I say, it's lovely. Nothing else to say, I guess; or, as the band puts it with one of those delicious delicate slices of disaffectedness, "my heels are high, my eyes cast low..." - or something like that, I suppose.
And one from a little further back that I never got round to writing about was Jens Lekman's "Black Cab". The tuneful/morose thing has been done to death, of course, but rarely in such perfect style as here - this is close to the ultimate example of its type, even throwing in a lyrical reference to "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" ("so I said turn up the music, take me home or take me anywhere") and a musical one to Belle and Sebastian's "Mary Jo" (from which the flute fill is sampled). It makes you want to sing along from the dainty electric piano that rings the song in and its first words ("Oh no goddamn, I missed the last tram") - and I do - not just because it's so catchy, but also because the sentiments it expresses are so delightfully downcast and on the money; I'd quote more from it but every line is so exactly right, particularly when poor Jens sings it in that sonorous groan of his, that it doesn't seem right to reproduce individual sections out of context.
Actually, I've recently had a couple of experiences with 'black' cabs myself, where I've gotten into taxis and the driver has turned off the meter and asked me to just pay them however much I'd usually pay for that trip (presumably allowing them to avoid reporting the fare to the cab's owner and keep the full sum for themselves). It hasn't been done with any attitude, and I actually like the way that it forces the driver to rely on the honour of the passenger's estimate of the fare; also, once it happened when I needed to pay with the corporate AMEX card and I didn't get any attitude about that, either. Alas, of course, asking drivers to turn up the radio in real life is usually asking for trouble unless blaring top 40 dance-pop is your bag...
Although -- a couple of hyper-pop tunes that I get a kick out of, so-called meta-pop be damned (pop is pop!), are Girls Aloud's "Biology" (a ridiculous number of seriously catchy, genuinely different hooks crammed into three and a half minutes) and the Veronicas' "4ever" (girls singing sweet tunes in nice voices with 'rock' guitars and state of the moment major label production...yes, I can be predictable sometimes).
But going back to going out, a couple of weekends ago I went in search of a bar called Eurotrash in Chinatown, having picked up a flyer and free drink card somewhere along the line and been attracted by the name, but instead ended up at Fad, right next door. It was a nice place, kinda Fitzroy, pretty, colourful, mismatched, comfortable decor, friendly crowd but not too full, gallery attached and art on the walls - exactly my comfort zone, in other words. Anyhow, they also had a turntable and dj in the corner, and for the whole time we were there, all he did was play one high school favourite of mine after another, interspersed with more recent totems - stretching my memory a bit now, but "The Killing Moon" definitely got a spin, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" too, some Smiths, Nick Cave I think, maybe the Velvets, and others of a similar vintage...and also the Dandy Warhols, and perhaps Tori? Result: many warm and 'aw shucks' feelings in yours truly.
The other one that sticks in my mind is the first time I went to Misty. It was a weeknight, I think, and quiet, and the Scissor Sisters were playing as we arrived. I'm pretty sure that it was the whole album, but near the end; after that came the Lost in Translation soundtrack (regardless of how it comes about, any bar that plays both "Just Like Honey" and "Sometimes" gets my vote) and then Dolly Parton's Jolene, full albums both...the diversity and offhandedly good taste made me happy and definitely contributed to Misty for a while becoming my new favourite bar.
The moral of the story is: when I open my own bar ("The Waste Land"), which will probably happen some time after "Well, it pays the bills" but before I turn my back on the modern world and disappear into the socialist utopia of South America (this is years down the track, remember), it will unquestionably play excellent music; as Alex in Everything Is Illuminated might have said, it will be very premium.
